Whether you’re new to MAPublisher®, an experienced user, or simply thinking about a purchase, Avenza software training is a worthwhile experience. Get hands-on training from Avenza product specialists at one of our training courses around North America.
Who should attend?
GIS professionals who want to produce better quality maps
Map makers and cartographers incorporating GIS data to improve accuracy in their maps
New MAPublisher users who just purchased a license
Users who want to experience the latest features of MAPublisher
Cost
Cost of the two-day training course is $1,000 USD per person. Discounts are available to groups of three or more from the same organization and for returning students desiring a refresher or update. Major credit cards are accepted.
Training details
Hands-on training takes place at a training center classroom where Windows computers and all required software and training data are provided.
Attendees will learn the fundamentals of MAPublisher and learn how to use all major features. Attendees will also receive basic instruction on the use of Adobe Illustrator as it relates to MAPublisher and cartographic production. A basic knowledge of Adobe Illustrator is recommended, but not required.
Attendees are encouraged to bring his or her own datasets. There will be some time during the end of the course to discuss these with an instructor.
Attendees that are Mac users may opt to bring his or her own Mac and software. Make sure to inform Avenza a week before training to setup the system properly for training.
Classes may be cancelled up to seven business days prior to the confirmed training date (depending on the number of reservations received).
Toronto, ON, April 6, 2005 – Avenza Systems Inc., producers of MAPublisher cartographic software, and MAPdata USA, MAPdata World and MajorCities USA royalty-free GIS/cartographic data files, announces that it has agreed to an exclusive sponsorship of the Cartotalk online discussion group for cartography and design.
“We have been looking for a suitable online forum of cartographic discussion to which to lend our support for some time now” said Ted Florence, president of Avenza. “Cartotalk is definitely a worthwhile and active forum and we are delighted to participate in its growth and to see it flourish as the main source of exchanging information on map-making subjects”, he added.
“The goal of Cartotalk was to create a forum for cartographers with an emphasis on the design aspects of cartography. Avenza’s MAPublisher is widely recognized as an important tool in modern-day digital cartography and we are very pleased to have Avenza participate in Cartotalk to such a degree” said Nick Springer of Springer Cartographics, the administrator of Cartotalk. “We hope that Avenza’s involvement and support Cartotalk will help make it the primary portal for cartographers” he added.
More about MAPublisher
MAPublisher is powerful map production software for creating cartographic-quality maps from GIS data. Developed as a suite of plug-ins for Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Freehand, MAPublisher leverages the superior graphics editing capabilities of these applications with the strength and power of GIS data. Full details and downloadable demo versions are available at www.avenza.com.
More about Avenza Systems Inc.
Avenza Systems Inc. is a privately held, award-winning supplier of powerful map-making software and affordable geodata products. The Company also offers product training and consulting services. Visit www.avenza.com for more details.
More about Cartotalk.com
Cartotalk is a public forum for cartography and design which includes sections on general cartographic news, a searchable discussion forum, an events calendar and related tutorials and tips. Cartotalk is maintained by Springer Cartographics of Crosswicks, NJ and can be found at www.cartotalk.com.
For further information:
Tel: 416-487-5116
Email: info@avenza.com
Web: www.avenza.com
3 part set of GIS map data covering the world at 1:15 million scale.
Toronto, ON, March 22, 2005 – Avenza Systems Inc., the developer of MAPublisher map production software and MAPdataUSA shapefile data for the United States , is pleased to announce the release of MAPdata World, a 3 part set of royalty-free GIS map data covering the world at 1:15 million scale.
This detailed world vector dataset was initially created by Avenza UK reseller and digital data experts, The XYZ Digital Map Co., Ltd., and was specially created / designed for Avenza and the MAPublisher user. As a result it contains many data and design elements you will not find anywhere else in a world data set.
MAPdata World comes complete with ESRI Arcview project and shapefiles, MapInfo tab and workspace files and a set of MAPublisher-optimized mid/mif files which have been fine tuned and simplified for optimum performance with MAPublisher, whether working in Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia FreeHand.
Vector data layers include towns, roads, railways, rivers, lakes, administration areas and lines, symbols and physical names. Raster contour and hillshading layers are also available. This is a royalty-free data set that allows for the unrestricted use of all files for the design and creation of maps for print and/or electronic distribution.
“MAPdata World is our response to customer requests for more high-quality and royalty-free map data that they can use with MAPublisher or their GIS,” said Ted Florence, president of Avenza Systems Inc. “This data set has everything you need to make detailed maps of the world or world regions whether for publication or for use with your GIS.,” he added.
Summary of MAPdata World features and benefits:
royalty-free*
ready for immediate use in your GIS or with MAPublisher
cross-platform (Windows and Mac) compatibility
presented in widely used GIS file formats
optimized files for use with MAPublisher included
includes national road and rail networks
includes hydrologic features such as drainage, rivers and lakes
includes up-to-date administrative boundaries
raster hillshading and contours are included
selected features include attributes for labeling
project and workspace files contain labels set at pre-determined zoom levels for ease of viewing
MAPublisher-optimized files include preset labels that can be used without further modifications
For complete product details and downloadable samples visit www.avenza.com
*certain restrictions apply. See website for details.
MAPdata World is available now direct from Avenza Systems Inc. and through Avenza’s worldwide reseller network at US$999 for the complete 3-format set or at US$599 for an individual file format.
More about MAPublisher
MAPublisher is powerful map production software for creating cartographic-quality maps from GIS data. Developed as a suite of plug-ins for Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Freehand, MAPublisher leverages the superior graphics capabilities of these design packages with over 40 tools including import/export of major GIS file formats with all the attribute information intact and usable.
More about Avenza Systems Inc.
Avenza Systems Inc. is an award winning, privately held corporation that provides cartographers and GIS professionals with powerful software tools for making better maps. In addition to software offerings for Mac and Windows users, the Company offers value-added data sets, product training and consulting services. Visit www.avenza.com or call 416-487-5116 for more details.
More about The XYZ Digital Map Co., Ltd.
The XYZ Digital Map Co., Ltd., based in Scotland , are specialists in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and cartography. They supply map data for GIS users and the web as well as specializing in map creation and complete map and GIS database design and production services. Visit www.xyzmaps.com for more details.
For further information:
Tel: 416-487-5116
Email: info@avenza.com
Web: www.avenza.com
Toronto, ON, February 7, 2005 – Avenza Systems Inc., producers of MAPublisher cartographic software, announces that the School of Mathematical & Geospatial Sciences at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia has chosen the MAPublisher software for use in their cartographic lab.
“We have continually subscribed to the ideas that contemporary cartography education programmes must ensure that the ART is not excluded in the rush towards automation of the mapping process” said William Cartwright, Associate Professor of Multimedia Cartography. “Students in the bachelor of Applied Science in Multimedia Cartography have access to a wide range of mapping, GIS, multimedia and scientific software and the addition of MAPublisher will complement these software packages and allow for us to realize the ART elements, by combining existing software and processes with the design and production capabilities that MAPublisher offers”, he added.
MAPublisher will be primarily used in the software lab by staff and students towards the degree. This 3 year program educates students who have an interest in multimedia technology and geographical visualization, and who wish to apply these interests to tasks involving the design and production of contemporary maps and geospatial products. The program then allows students to enter the bachelor of Applied Science in Geospatial Science (honours), where they are able to undertake a research programme that focuses on a contemporary cartography issue. Students will be able to take advantage of the graphics capabilities of MAPublisher to produce high-quality maps.
More about MAPublisher
MAPublisher is powerful map production software for creating cartographic-quality maps from GIS data. Developed as a suite of plug-ins for Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Freehand, MAPublisher leverages the superior graphics editing capabilities of these applications with the strength and power of GIS data. Full details and downloadable demo versions are available at www.avenza.com.
More about Avenza Systems Inc.
Avenza Systems Inc. is a privately held, award-winning supplier of powerful map-making software and affordable geodata products. The Company also offers product training and consulting services. Visit www.avenza.com for more details.
More about the RMIT School of Mathematical & Geospatial Sciences
The School of Mathematical & Geospatial Sciences at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology was created in 2004, combining the former Department of Geospatial Science with the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. It draws together disciplines involving the quantitative and qualitative visualization of data in a unique amalgam of expertise and application. As well as teaching its own undergraduate science degrees in Geomatics, Mathematics, Multimedia Cartography and Surveying, the School is a key provider of service teaching to other Schools of the RMIT University . The School also offers graduate programs at Graduate Diploma, masters and Doctoral level.
For further information:
Tel: 416-487-5116
Email: info@avenza.com
Web: www.avenza.com
One of the powerful remote sensing tools available in Adobe Photoshop is to detect the land surface information by creating a false color composite image. Multispectral images contain the reflectance information from the visible and invisible electromagnetic spectrum. Using this information, we can detect many kinds of land surface information. For this example, we will detect the green area using Landsat images imported by Geographic Imager for Adobe Photoshop, which ensures all the georeference information is maintained.
Landsat images consist of several gray scale images, with each image containing one of the bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. For example, in the Geographic Imager tutorial folder, there are a set of Landsat images available. Those gray scale images are from Band 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 8.
These images need to be combined into one image. The Adobe Photoshop function called “Merge Channels” produces one image by combining mulitple gray scaled images. With this example, those gray scale images from Band 2, 3, and 4 will be merged into one image by assigning a color for each band.
1) Open the Landsat image from Band 2, 3, and 4. Note that the Geographic Imager panel shows the information on the coordinate system and image extents.
2) Open the Channel panel (Window > Channels). Choose “Merge Channels” from the panel options menu.
3) In the Merge Channels dialog box, select RGB color as the mode.
4) In the Merge RGB Channels dialog box, specify the band for each channel: band 4 for the red channel, band 3 for the green channel, and band 2 for the blue channel.
5) As a result, those three images from Band 2, 3, and 4, are assigned to the Blue, Green and Red channels, respectively.
6) Now, let’s take a look at the image!
This combination of false-color makes vegetation appear as red tones. The bright red color indicates the growing vegtation. Water is displayed in a blue color. When the water contains high sediment concentrations, the color will be lighter blue. Urban areas will appear gray to blue-gray in color.
7) All the georeferenced information is inherited by the new image with merged channels from those original images. The georeference information is displayed in the Geographic Imager panel.
Here’s a question we receive at Avenza support quite often: I’ve located and imported a GIS layer of road lines with attributes for the city I’m mapping. How can I turn this:
into this:
Getting Started
The workflow for this process involves the use of both MAPublisher and Adobe tools, specifically MAP Stylesheets and MAP Selections along with Illustrator’s Graphic Styles and the Appearance Panel.
This process works on roads that have an attribute on which you can base classification rules. My road data has a column named “CLASS” with four categories: Controlled, Controlled-Ramp, Highway, and Street. I’ve created a graphic style for each and loaded them using “Open Graphic Style Library”. I keep the road styles I have created in a template document titled RoadStyles.ai so that I can import the graphic styles I need into whatever map I’m making from my template (see Adobe Graphic Styles Help).
Controlled Access Highway:
Controlled Access Ramp:
Major Road:
Minor Road:
These styles all have been created using the Illustrator Apprearance panel to overlay two strokes, the top stroke with a smaller weight and different colour than the bottom stroke (see Adobe Appearance Panel Help).
With our graphic styles set I can now apply the MAP Stylesheet I built using the following expressions:
Cleaning up with groups
Once we apply these styles using MAPublisher Stylesheets, we will see what steps we muys take to get the appearance we want. Our roads look like this:
but we want them to look like this:
Why does this happen?
This occurs because MAP Stylesheets applies graphic styles at the path level. To look like intersections, each road classification must become one object, whether by being grouped or by turning the various paths into a compound path. Grouping is the preferred method for managing these objects since a compund path will delete the attributes of all paths that are being compounded. In this case, the street names field would be blank for our compound path object as dozens of streets are turned into one compund path. The consequence of this would be to make automatic labelling with MAPublisher Label Pro impossible. A set of paths turned into a group will not have their attributes available to MAPublisher while in a group, however these objects can always be ungrouped making individual paths and their original attributes available again.
Grouping Objects
In order to group our road classes we will have to select the road paths belonging to each class. The expressions we created when defining our MAP Stylesheet rules are available to us to use again through the Expression Library (new in MAPublisher 8.3). We can use MAP Selections to individually select each of our road classes. Once selected the street classes can be grouped using CTRL+G on your keyboard or Object > Group from the menu (See Adobe Group Help). The final step is to re-apply the graphic style appropriate to each group using the Adobe Graphic Style panel.
If we want to get technical here in considering what has happend to our artwork, using the Appearance panel we can see that each of the paths we initially imported now has a graphic style applied to it on two levels: at the path level (done through MAP Stylesheets) and at the group level (done by grouping and applying a graphic style to the group). It is possible to symbolize our artwork even further, at the layer level, by slecting the target symbol for our roads layer (See Adobe Layers Help). If desired we could apply a transparency at the layer level that would supersede all graphic styles used on objects in the layer. Our artwork will now have symbolization that suggests intersections, giving our road map a much neater appearance.
Tweaking
Now that our roads are grouped together, they are much easier to manage in the Illustrator Layers panel.
Groups can be stacked easily. My preference is to arrange with minor roads at the bottom, increasing to multi-laned divided highways at the top of the hierarchy. With our objects grouped it is easy to move objects between groups. Any path can be selected using the Direct Selection Tool and dragged in the Layers panel between groups. This is much simplier than having to use the Appearance panel to strip the path of both graphic styles and apply the desired style. There will be some situations where we will need to override the intersection appearances that result from grouping. In this image we have onramps that definitely do not interesect as this line work suggests!
To do this we must select the road lines that will be on top of the intersection, and using the Illustrator Layers panel, drag them from their group (it does not matter where in the layer hierarchy the are placed).
Our ungrouped ramps can now be sent backwards and forwards relative to other paths, giving a truer representation of the road network:
Using MAP Stylesheets to create a Legend
So why use stylesheets if we must manually group the objects after use? For a few reasons: it keeps us organized, it adds the expressions to the expression library, and most importantly MAP Stylesheets can automatically generate a Legend for us that reflects our Stylesheet rule names:
Good luck creating customized road styles! A deeper understanding of the Illustrator object styling hierarchy can go a long way in helping you use MAPublisher to leverage your GIS datasets!
We receive many questions about cartographic techniques. A very popular question from MAPublisher users is “How do I mask lines behind contour labels?”
Adobe Illustrator provided some tools to achieve that through a pretty complicated workflow, so we decided to create our own tool! The upcoming release of MAPublisher 8.3 has a very handy new feature called Create Knockouts, here is how it works.
First, you need a labelled map – for example contours and labels.
Start the Create Knockouts tool. All you need to do is choose the layer that contains the lines to be masked and the text layer with the labels.
There are many options available, but let’s keep the default (100% opacity, no buffer around the text, use the default text bounding box from Adobe).
The result:
These knockouts are little bit tight after all, maybe we should add some buffer distance on the side. Start Create Knockouts again (no undo required!). Choose a side buffer of 5 pixels, and make sure to check “Replace existing knockouts”.
Et voilà!
MAPublisher 8.3 is releasing very soon. Watch our Twitter and News page for announcements.
MAPublisher and Geographic Imager provide an extensive library of predefined coordinate systems available for referencing or transforming mapping projects.
In the United States, the NGS (National Geodetic Survey), a department of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) has established a system that divides the United States into 124 zones, each with its own custom projected coordinate system. This system is known as the State Plane Coordinate System. It is important to note that there are two sets of State Plane coordinate systems defined in the United States, one based on the North American Datum of 1927 and the other based on the North American Datum of 1983. In addition to NAD 83, the NAD83 HARN and NSRS2007 adjustments are available for use. All three versions of NAD83 are available in metres, feet or international feet.
State Plane Coorindate Systems projections
There are four projections for SPCS. The geometric direction of each state determines the projection utilized. For states that are longer in the east-west direction, the Lambert Conformal Conic is used. States which are longer in the north-south direction use the Transverse Mercator projection. The panhandle of Alaska, which has the sole distinction of lying at an angle, garners the use of the Oblique Mercator projection, while Guam uses a Polyconic projection.
These coordinates systems are all defined in the MAPublisher and Geographic Imager library, however the initial question “which one do I need to use for my map” cannot be answered by the software itself.
There are a number of ways to determine in which zone your American area of interest lies. One online resource, searchable by latitude and longitude coordinates, can be found on this NGS website.
In an effort to better assist mapmakers in their selection of the appropriate system, the Avenza support team has prepared a searchable interactive map using MAPublisher 8.2 MAP Web Author tool. View the SPCS map here.
A MAPublisher geospatial PDF of the same map is also available for download here.
Transform into State Plane Coorindate Systems using MAPublisher
When it comes time to transform your data into the appropriate State Plane Coordinate System zone, use the MAP View Editor Perform Coordinates System Transformation option. When you specify the destination coordinate system for the transformation, navigate to Coordinate Systems > Projected > North America > United States > US State Plane NAD 83 – on the right hand list, you’ll find all the state plane zones sorted by state name and zone name: select the right one!
Note: similarly you can select the NAD27 state plane systems from Coordinate Systems > Projected > North America > United States > US State Plane NAD 27 if appropriate.
Enable your organization to distribute the Avenza Maps app across mobile devices, access Avenza support and request app features and enhancements with an Avenza Maps Pro subscription. Empower your team to use proprietary maps in the field for navigation and for data collection.
Avenza Maps Pro allows you to import an unlimited number of your own geospatial PDF, GeoPDF®, and GeoTIFF maps. The beauty is that you can access these maps even when you’re offline.
